The Prime Suspect Cases by Lynda La Plante

Author:Lynda La Plante [La Plante, Lynda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Chapter Ten

Tennison had the nine a.m. briefing put back to nine-fifteen. First she wanted Burkin in, and she told DS Haskons to send him along as soon as he arrived. He came in, pale and hollow-eyed, a shaving nick on his chin, and stayed standing and silent while she tore into him. The second time in under two weeks; it was getting to be a bad habit.

‘I’m not talking about Oswalde’s part in this,’ Tennison stormed at him. She stayed on her feet, pacing, because if she sat down she’d have had the cigarette packet out. ‘You and Mike Calder had the authority to stop those interviews. Instead, you let them continue – no, better still, you let Oswalde interview the boy on his own while you sat by the telephone waiting for me to do your job for you—’

She broke away to answer the door. It was Haskons.

‘Ready when you are, Guv.’

‘Right.’ She closed the door and walked around Burkin to the desk. He was looking carefully at nothing in particular, as long as it wasn’t her. She didn’t care what he was feeling, or what he thought of her; this was a professional matter; she was expected to do her job, and she expected him to do his.

‘The rank of inspector is supposed to mean something, Frank. It carries responsibility. It’s supposed to denote a certain authority.’ She stared up at him, hands clasped at her waist. ‘You won’t make excuses. You’ll face the music like a man. That’ll be all.’

Burkin turned and left the office.

He went directly to the Incident Room, where Muddyman was perched on the corner of a desk, sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup. The other members of the team were lounging about, and Muddyman was saying, ‘I don’t understand it – we’re at Harvey’s bedside getting a confession and meanwhile Oswalde’s off chasing Tony. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘His ass is grass,’ said Rosper, the jive slang specialist, with a shrug.

Haskons was more sympathetic. ‘It’s a dreadful thing to have happened. You carry that around with you for the rest of your life,’ he said.

Still smarting from his encounter with Tennison, Burkin didn’t see why anyone else should be let off the hook. ‘The spade should be suspended. I mean, why was he brought here in the first place?’

‘You know why,’ Muddyman said.

‘To talk to his people,’ Jones said.

‘Yeah . . . and now one of them’s dead and it’s down to him,’ Burkin growled. He looked around the circle of faces, aware that not all of them were convinced. ‘Look, I’m not exaggerating or nothing,’ he told them stridently. ‘That boy was really weird, I mean climbing the walls, screaming and shouting, like mental or something. And believe me, I tried to tell him . . . ’

‘Yeah, course you did, Frank,’ Haskons said, nodding, as if Burkin was insisting that Santa Claus really did exist.

The discussion dried up as Oswalde entered the room. No one greeted or looked at him, and he didn’t seem to care either way, going straight to his desk and sitting down.

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